Oh-ho! I have missed today’s noon deadline. It’s all good, though. We all have to bend the rules a little bit right now.
Part of the reason I am sending this issue late is that I had to go grocery shopping this morning. I don’t love grocery shopping under abjectly normal circumstances so you can guess how I feel about it now!
They’re not limiting the number of people who can be in the store at the same time, though I think that will start soon. It was too crowded this morning but I didn’t have time to go to a different store and I didn’t want to wait. I wore my face mask; I would say a good half of the people shopping were also wearing either masks or gloves or both. In reality, this is a good thing. But combined with the ravaged shelves it feels depressing.
Unavailable today: eggs, shredded cheese, any variety of tubed biscuit product (???), most kinds of butter, flour, most of the cake and brownie mixes, nearly all the canned and dried beans, toilet paper, paper towels, any disinfecting product, Pringles (I only know this because I felt drawn to buy Pringles and then could not), most kinds of pasta. Truly, I thought we were all done panic-buying? Or is this just the effect of years of just-in-time inventory practices coming home to roost on a populace that is suddenly shopping for three meals a day, cooked at home for however many people live there?
Some mask-making supplies arrived today, so I spent a while cutting and pinning. I sewed a couple of masks but the rest will have to wait until I get more elastic. I’m just going to make as many as I can for whoever needs them.
We’re having fish and chips for dinner and this weekend I want to make a coconut cake. I might bake the layers and freeze them so I can wait to frost them on Monday; sometimes my dogs are too obnoxious to really be able to delve into a big baking project and Monday, presumably, they will be at daycare. Though as quickly as things are changing day-to-day I never know whether or not to count on that.
I told one of my friends yesterday that I feel like we are all sitting with our heads positioned directly between two alarms with flashing lights and sirens, and we are supposed to try and work or take care of our families or just keep up with day-to-day tasks while these alarms are blaring away. Our options are to only pay attention to the alarms or try to ignore them for a little bit. What a shitty choice! It’s no wonder people are buying all the tube biscuits and Pringles, there’s very little anyone can control besides snacks.